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Educational Publishing: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

You’re probably familiar with the term BYO at restaurants and for party invitations. But have you ever been told to BYOD? BYOD is hitting schools all over the globe, with governments and local authorities noting its benefits.

You might be thinking, ‘I am a parent, what does this mean for me?’ or alternatively you might have your ‘I am an educational publisher, what does this mean for me?’ hat on. We’re writing this with the latter in mind. As a publisher, how can you prepare for the onset of publishing for a multitude of devices?

Before delving into what this will mean exactly, it is worth noting one of the main advantages of this phenomena. If schools are freeing up some of their budgets normally allocated to technology, in theory (!) they will have more budget left to invest in the content to support the devices, such as textbooks and online tools. Good news for publishers.

Another consideration is the likelihood that students might have better devices at home than they do at school. Therefore expectations of an even more advanced reading experience will be higher. Rather than iPads being locked away in a student’s bedroom from 8 – 4, with the BYOD initiative they get used at school, in place of the moderately performing old hardware.

There is a tendency for educational publishers to develop native iOS apps. Often built in rich native code, they are really useful and whizzy on an iPhone, on an iPad and urm … well, that’s your limit. It is generally understood that this is something the publisher ‘should do’ and is seen as a marketing tool. However, uptake of Android devices is on the rise, and with Windows launching their tablet imminently, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that multi-platform publishing is imperative to maintain your profits and adapt your business to the B2C market.

A number of educational publishers are wondering what Windows 8 will mean for their content. We think it’s going to be big for education. Windows To Go is a personalized learning tool and means that students can access the full experience of Windows 8 from home, simply by directly booting from a USB drive. This can work with any system using Windows 7 or above. Great for students, and great for your content, which if developed correctly will be ready to be viewed on Windows 8 for its launch.

BYOD isn’t limited to the classroom; many companies are using this initiative with their employees. It helps them to keep up with email, phone calls and other work they do online, from the comfort of their own device. Tech-savvy employees are likely to change their devices faster than the company upgrades anyway. If you publish training manuals, professional course material or are a professional learning provider, this is worth considering too.

Great post! We agree with the fact that students should have the same technological resources at school as they have at home. Given the fact that everything is going digital and becoming more technology dependent over time, it would make most sense to provide students with technology devices.